Jepson Leadership Forum History

2025-26

The 2025-26 Jepson Leadership Forum addresses the significance of sports in American life. We will explore sports in the contexts of ethical and effective leadership, cultural significance, the impact of analytics, and recent changes to the guidelines governing college and professional sports. Speakers will discuss these topics from a variety of perspectives, drawing on their personal experiences, academic research, and industry expertise.

Sept. 10, 2025
Desmond Howard 
A member of ESPN’s College GameDay crew, Desmond Howard covers college football week in and week out during the season. His award-winning and record-setting college career at the University of Michigan earned him the Heisman Trophy, Maxwell Award, Walter Camp Award, and first-team All-American honors. His NFL career lasted 11 seasons, during which he also received the Super Bowl MVP award.     
Leadership and Values On and Off the Field

Nov. 17, 2025
Dean Oliver
Currently a data scientist at ESPN, Dean Oliver pioneered the basketball analytics movement and is the author of Basketball on Paper and Basketball Beyond Paper. He incorporated analytics in his roles in the NBA front offices and as an assistant coach and helped create ESPN’s sports analytics group in 2011.     
The Push for Data-Driven Decisions in Sports
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March 23, 2026
Theresa Runstedtler 
A scholar of African American history and professor and department chair at American University, Theresa Runstedtler researches Black popular culture, with a particular focus on the intersection of race, gender, labor, and sport. She is the author of Black Ball: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the Generation That Saved the Soul of the NBA.
When the NBA Became Black: Race and Labor in Professional Basketball
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2024-25

The 2024-25 Jepson Leadership Forum invites scholars and experts to discuss how division and polarization affect American democracy. We will explore how and why divisions have manifested historically and currently in the United States, focusing on their impact on justice, education, politics, culture, technology, and class.

Are division and the struggle to find common ground making us stronger or tearing us apart? Join us as we search for answers to this and other questions.

Sept. 12, 2024
Danielle Allen, James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University and director of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation at Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation
Justice by Means of Democracy
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*Co-sponsored by the Gary L. McDowell Institute, the Bonner Center for Civic Engagement, and the School of Arts & Sciences

Oct. 1, 2024
Christopher Bail, Professor of sociology, political science, and public policy at Duke University; associate of the Duke Initiative for Science and Society; and founding director of the Polarization Lab at Duke University
Bridging Divides with Generative AI
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Nov. 19, 2024
Eric Klinenberg, Author and Helen Gould Shepard Professor of Social Science and director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University
How 2020 Shaped 2024
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March 4, 2025
Peter Bearman, Founding director of the interdisciplinary institute Incite at Columbia University and Jonathan R. Cole Professor of Social Science at Columbia University
Class, Status, and Party: Polarization Dynamics and Our Fragile Democratic Experiment
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April 15, 2025
Natalie Wexler, Education writer and author of The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America’s Broken Education System—And How to Fix It
Curriculum Wars: Why K-12 Education Reflects Our Divisions and How It Can Help Us Overcome Them
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2023-24

The last few decades have seen rapid changes in gender relations and norms—in the household, in the workforce, and in government. The 2023-24 Jepson Leadership Forum invites speakers to discuss masculinity in the context of these recent cultural changes. 

Specific topics include the role of hormones in gender identity and behavior, status competition and violence, challenges facing men as a result of the changing nature of the family and the economy, Black masculinity in the United States, and the past and future of patriarchy globally.

Sept. 12, 2023
Richard V. Reeves, President of the American Institute for Boys and Men and author of Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It
Solving the Crisis of Our Boys and Men
Presentation video. Take 5 video. Listen to the audio.

Oct. 5, 2023
Rob Henderson, Social psychologist; U.S. Air Force veteran; author whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Boston Globe; and creator and editor of Rob Henderson’s Newsletter, which has more than 40,000 subscribers
Understanding the Young Male Syndrome
Presentation video. Take 5 video. Listen to the audio.

Nov. 14, 2023
David Benatar
Professor of philosophy and director of the Bioethics Centre at the University of Cape Town and author of books, including The Second Sexism: Discrimination Against Men and Boys
The Second Sexism: Discrimination Against Men and Boys

Jan. 22, 2024
Carole Hooven
Author of T: The Story of Testosterone; former lecturer and co-director of Undergraduate Studies, Harvard University’s Department of Human Evolutionary Biology; currently a lab associate in the Harvard University Department of Psychology and a non-resident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI)
The Non-Toxic Nature of Masculinity
Presentation video. Take 5 video. Listen to the audio.

Feb. 13, 2024
Charles Blow
New York Times columnist, MSNBC political analyst, anchor of PRIME with Charles Blow on the Black News Channel, and author of Fire Shut Up in My Bones and The Devil You Know
Black Masculinity
Presentation video. Take 5 video. Listen to the audio.

March 5, 2024
Alice Evans
Senior lecturer at King’s College London and author of the forthcoming book The Great Gender Divergence
Ten Thousand Years of Patriarchy
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2022-23

The 2022-23 Jepson Leadership Forum focuses on past and present failures in leadership and followership by shining a spotlight on times where we could – and should – have done better.

We invite scholars, experts, and activists to reflect on what went wrong in the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, climate change, the U.S. COVID-19 response, historical memory and racism, and higher education crises—and how to do better going forward.

Sept. 14, 2022
Clint Smith, Staff writer at the Atlantic and author of New York Times best-selling book How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America
Historical Memory and Racism
Take 5 video.         

Oct. 24, 2022
Alice Dreger, Journalist, historian, and author of Galileo’s Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science, a New York Times Book Review editors’ choice
Free Speech and Open Inquiry in Higher Education
Presentation video. Take 5 video.

Nov. 30, 2022
Congressman Seth Moulton, U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., former Marine Corps captain     
U.S. Withdrawal from Afghanistan
Presentation video. 

Jan. 19, 2023 
Rhiana Gunn-Wright, Director of Climate Policy, Roosevelt Institute
Climate Change
Presentation video. Take 5 video.  

Feb. 15, 2023 
Alex Tabarrok, Bartley J. Madden Chair in Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and professor of economics at George Mason University
U.S. COVID-19 Response
Presentation video. Take 5 video.

2021-22

The 2021-22 Jepson Leadership Forum invites scholars, activists, and experts to discuss the moral, ethical, and legal implications of global migration and asylum. Join us as we explore how leaders and communities navigate the economic, social, and cultural transformations of a world with – and without – borders and walls.

Sept. 13, 2021
Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, Perry World House Professor of Practice of Law and Human Rights, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, former Jordanian Ambassador to the United States
The Promise of Global Human Rights
Presentation video.

Oct. 19, 2021
Bryan Caplan, Professor of Economics at George Mason University and New York Times best-selling author
The Science and Ethics of Immigration
Presentation video. Take 5 video.

Jan. 27, 2022
S. James Anaya, University Distinguished Professor and Nicholas Doman Professor of International Law, University of Colorado, Boulder
What International Law Has to Say About Indigenous Peoples: Does it Matter?
Presentation video.  

March 15, 2022
Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize-winning, New York Times best-selling author, Senior Fellow, Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, and staff writer at the Atlantic
Autocracy and Democracy in an Era of Nationalism
Presentation video. Take 5 video.

March 24, 2022 
Seyla Benhabib, Eugene Meyer Professor of Political Science and Professor of Philosophy, Yale University
Human Dignity, Democracy, and Borders: What We Owe Refugees
Presentation video.